


the lies we tell about whales and other things

by CopperCaravan



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Codename: Tens, Established Relationship, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Other, Post-Canon, Relationship Status: It's Complicated, railroad ending, the author apologizes in advance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 11:07:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10410783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: A while after the destruction of the Institute, Tens prepares to leave the Commonwealth. Deacon interrupts these plans with one of his own: hunting Bunker Hill's fabled ghoul whale.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For anybody who doesn't know much about Tens, she's a synth copy of a pre-war military veteran, specifically one from a special ops team.  
> Also be aware: spoilers for the endgame of several factions, for certain characters and locations, and for the quest Here There Be Monsters.  
> No characters die in the fic but lots of characters died *before* the fic and those deaths come up. A lot.

Sanctuary has never been her home.

Father said his parents lived here, with him, when he was a baby, before the bombs fell. But Tens never belonged here, before the bombs or after. It just seemed like the right place to bring Shaun, until she figured out what to do now that... now that everything’s over.

“You could stay, you know.” Sturges is leaning against the doorway of her room. _Her_ room. So strange. He laughs a little. “Be nice not to be the only synth around.”

She’s not even sure how many of them know Sturges is a synth. He’s the only one here who knows it about her, anyway. Well, and probably Mama Murphy, but that woman always knows more than she lets on.

She’s gonna miss him the most. That’s strange too.

“I can’t,” she says. This place—it isn’t hers. She doesn’t really have a place in this world, but Sanctuary, the Commonwealth, after everything that’s happened to her, everything she’s done, she doesn’t fit here. Her existence has altered the land too much for her to belong to it.

She changed Far Harbor too—irreparably—but the hole she left there isn’t so obvious, the body count isn’t so high. She won’t have to be anyone there, not a Minuteman, not a traitorous Paladin, not the Wanderer. She can just be herself, whoever the hell that is.

Sturges grips her arms, not too tightly, just enough that she knows. He’s gonna miss her too. “You come back whenever you want, ok? You always got a place here, if you want it.”

She purses her lips and looks at the floor, nods her head. She wants to say something, or to hug him, or something. Something normal people do when they... But she wasn’t normal even before she became whatever, whoever, she is now. The great thing about Sturges is that he gets it. He gives her arms a quick squeeze before he lets go and heads back toward the door.

“I’m gonna go tinker with that clicky generator. Don’t go nowhere without saying goodbye, ok?”

“Ok.”

And then she’s alone again, stuffing Shaun’s extra clothes into a duffel bag.

But not for long.

The creak of weight against the door frame—for a second, she thinks it must be Sturges again, but when he doesn’t say anything, she knows.

“Going somewhere?”

Deacon’s probably been nearby the whole time, probably saw the whole thing. Asshole. Everybody else just _talks_ to her but not him, oh no. He isn’t really talking to her even when he is. _Lying_ asshole. She doesn’t turn around. Having someone behind her lights up every ounce of adrenaline in her body but _damn him,_ so she keeps packing Shaun’s things. He doesn’t have a lot of stuff though, so she just packs more slowly.

“How long you gonna ignore me?”

“Not long,” she admits. “But if you came to ask me to do a job, just get the fuck out.”

She feels more than hears him cross the small distance between them. “Well, it’s a good thing that’s not what I came for,” he says. Then he leans in and wraps his arms around her waist, whispers the next bit into her hair. “Got an idea, though.”

She allows herself the indulgence, shuts her eyes and leans back into him. Just for a second. His arms tighten around her, lips at her ear, and she feels him relax too—just enough though, that she knows he knows it won’t last. She takes a deep breath before she pulls away from him and he lets her go. Just the same way he always fucking does. It’s always gonna be this way with them. It wouldn’t be so hard if he’d just be honest about it, but that’s the one thing Deacon will probably never be able to do.

“What do you want?”

He’s quiet just a beat too long and Tens knows she’s already hurting him. It’s hard to be sorry when the first thing that comes to mind is Glory, bleeding to death in front of her, and Danse, looking at her like he doesn’t know who she is anymore.

“You remember Bunker Hill?” She nods. Hard to forget. Aside from the Institute itself, that place holds the record for her highest kill count—doesn’t matter that she only pulled the trigger three times. It was her fault all those people, all those synths, died. “Remember that one caravan? With that guard who wouldn’t shut up about that ghoul whale? I was thinking we could go find it.”

She still answers her hands rather that turn around to look at him, but this is maybe the first time she’s genuinely laughed since Glory died. “You fuckin’ with me? You want _me_ to go with you to find a giant fucking sea monster? You don’t think this is more Tinker Tom kinda shit? Drumms, even?”

“Yeah, well, I see plenty of them.” The unspoken other half of that being that he hardly sees any of her anymore.

“Literally any fucking body in the Commonwealth would be better for huntin’ sea monsters,” she says. She turns to face him, and she keeps going, even though she already doesn’t mean it. “So what’s the job hiding underneath?”

He sighs and lifts his sunglasses just enough to pinch the bridge of his nose. “It’s not a Railroad thing.”

“It’s always a Railroad thing!” It doesn’t matter that she wants to give in. She can’t; if she’s learned a single fucking thing from all this, it’s that _you can’t trust everybody_. The “good guys” least of all. “ _You’re_ a Railroad thing!”

She wonders, when he throws up his hands and turns toward the door, if he’ll leave. She wonders if she’s pushed hard enough, _just_ enough. It doesn’t feel like enough, not for her. But it feels like too much at the same time; it feels so heavy. She thinks, for just a second, that she’d give anything to get back how they were before but she shuts that down before the thought’s even fully formed. She gave the Railroad _enough_ and she won’t give them one more goddamn thing.

But Deacon doesn’t leave; he just slumps against the threshold and lets his head _thunk_ against the wall. “I _miss_ you,” he says, looking at the ceiling.

She turns away again. “I miss you too.”

He stays where he is, but that playful quality falls back into his voice. “Then are you gonna go whale hunting with me?”

She takes a breath. Of course she’s gonna fucking go. She doesn’t think she’s had a choice in any of this since she met him.

“I have to talk to Shaun first.”

~

All those months ago, when she first left Sanctuary behind her, it never occurred to her that she might come back. But she did. And she kept leaving, too. Every time she passed the Rocket, that thought— _this is the last time_ —struck her. One way or another, though, she keeps returning to this place that is not hers.

Ever since she brought Shaun here, she doesn’t stray far, or long. In fact, since they moved in with Sturges, she’s only been away from the kid for a day or two at a time. Lexington’s the farthest she’s been.

She’s not _maternal._ She doesn’t know how to be. But she knows the wasteland, knows the danger that is always, _always_ present. And she knows that maybe she isn’t doing any of this quite right, but she’s trying.

Hell, the truth is, Shaun would probably be better off without her—better off with Marcy and Jun or at least people like them. But she’s not gonna leave him. She’s not gonna do that. She wasn’t Father’s mother and she’s not Shaun’s mother. But he thinks she is.

When she walks past the Rocket this time with Deacon, packs slung over their backs and Shaun yelling “Bye Mom! Bye Deacon!” from the bridge behind them, Tens knows that one day, she will walk past the Rocket and she will think _this is the last time_ and, one day, it will be true.

~

The first night, they don’t talk.

They don’t talk during the day, on the road leading around Lexington. They don’t talk when the sun sets and they both know they should’ve bunked down in one of the old apartment buildings. They don’t talk several hours into the night when they _do_ finally bunk down, either. Not out loud.

The house is a ways off the main road; that’s typically the best way to do it. She knows it’s stocked because sometimes the Minutemen use it when a patrol is coming through. And she knows _that_ because she helped set it up, back when she still thought she could be a good guy. There’s no patrol scheduled for anytime soon though, so she figures it’s empty and she’s right.

The roof of the second floor is mostly gone—which is a bitch on nights when the rain or the rads are coming down hard. Tonight though, it’s kinda nice. The sky is clear and dark and deep. For once, she doesn’t feel claustrophobic, like that sky is pressing down on her. She just feels... sort of hollowed out, like everything inside her has been scooped out and hidden away somewhere. She’s not in any hurry to find it, but the feeling makes her miss X6. She almost asks Deacon about that, but then she looks over at him unrolling a sleeping bag and it’s like he just _knows._ He pauses and looks up at her and their eyes lock on to each other for just a second before she remembers that this, like everything else about the two of them, isn’t a reality. It’s just a moment, and moments are fleeting things.

He knows that too.

She looks back up at the sky while he finishes unrolling their sleeping bags—a silent plea or a silent allowance for him to do what he wants, for him to have a moment of peace in which she doesn’t look at him and feel angry.

It’s not _him_ she hates, it’s the pieces of him that he hides, it’s the pieces of him that aren’t him. Not the disguises he puts on, but the ones he forgets to take off. And it’s the Railroad. It’s the Elder. It’s the Institute. It’s everyone who promised her better things, who let her believe she belonged somewhere or that she was making up for all the things she did—things _she_ didn’t even do but that she carries with her all the same. Things she did do, because she believed those promises.

It’s all a bunch of lies and she doesn’t hate Deacon, she hates that he’s as deep in the lies as she is. Deeper even, because at least _she’s_ trying to claw her way out.

When he’s done, he grabs a couple water bottles and a jar of peaches. Mac gave those to her, a thank you from farther south. She remembers—or well, the other her remembers peaches tasting a bit different, but she supposes nukes will do that. They’re still sweet though, so that’s something.

He sits down on the floor beside her and passes a bottle. Their shoulders press against each other and they eat in silence, in the dark.

Inside a settlement they’d light a lamp, but out here that’s asking for trouble. The sky—clear and full of stars as it is—doesn’t much make up for that absence, but it is a beautiful sight, if she were the sort who could really appreciate it beyond _big._ Expansive. Endless. Void.

It’s impressive and it makes her feel small. In comparison to that, nothing she’s ever done or ever will do really matters and that’s strangely comforting.

But those pretty stars don’t help her see sliced peaches.

Peaches are a messy sort of food—they drip and get sticky and are far too easy to smush in clumsy hands. Apparently, when it comes to anything other than killing, she’s the sort with clumsy hands. Before she’s even eaten half of her share, juice is dribbling down her hands and wrists like sweet, sticky tears. Her lips, her chin, her neck—all covered in the tracks of peaches.

She hopes Deacon’s having an equally messy time of it. He can’t be a refined peach-eater, not when she can hear him slurping right next to her. The thought makes her grin and he goes silent. It’s not the sudden lack of slurping, but the way his shoulder and arm tense against her. It always comes down to that with him: feeling, rather than hearing. And what she feels are his lips pressing softly against her neck, once, then again. Tentatively, cautiously, in a way that promises her the only thing he can promise: that there’s something real behind it all, and that he’d give that to her if he could.

He leans into her, the top of his head against the side of her neck, and he talks into her shoulder so quietly that she can barely hear him. “I miss you,” he says. Just like he had back at Sanctuary, but it’s different. Everything is different in moments like these because it’s dark, and it’s quiet, and it’s just them—whoever the hell they are. In these moments, the rest of the world is gone and there’s no reason to question the line between truths and lies. Nothing exists but the lack of space between them.

“I miss you too.”

~

Tens can count on one hand the number of mornings they’ve woken up together.

Far more often, they go to bed together and one of them leaves before the other is awake. Sometimes, one of them will pretend to be asleep to make it easier.

When it’s Deacon that leaves, he usually doesn’t go far. He’ll come back with breakfast or a job or, once, a box of wigs. When it’s her, she doesn’t come back. She goes to the bar or the Common or the workshop—somewhere she can be busy, her hands and her mind. He finds her, and maybe he touches her—a hand on the shoulder, at her back, her arm, once a kiss—but maybe he doesn’t.

Sometimes she forgets that it’s hard for him too.

But on the second day, they wake up still tangled together, sunrise shining into their eyes. They wake up, and they don’t move for a moment. She’s not sure...

But then he pulls her a little closer, holds her a little tighter, breathes into her a little deeper. The top of her head is tucked under his chin and she can’t see his face, but maybe that’s easier for both of them. She hates seeing the uncertainty there.

She can feel the questions bubbling up in his chest: _where are you going, how long will you be gone, won’t you come back_. Not now. So she lets herself relax, his muscles going slack in response, and she says “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

~

Part of her wants to just stay on the second floor of this house, at least today. And part of Deacon does too.

But that would be too easy; it would make things too hard.

So they pack up—not silently, but quietly, words traded more gently than they have been for a while—and they resume the long trek to Bunker Hill.

Avoiding Cambridge is an unspoken agreement.

More than Sanctuary, it was the place she began. There was something familiar about it, though Tens had never been there. And she found what she needed in Cambridge: comrades, answers, purpose. All that, even if only temporary, kept her alive before the anger—old and new—pressed her toward the end.

And in the end, it was—it _is_ the place where she ended. There are graves in Cambridge. For her friends, her enemies, the best parts of herself.

Everything reminds her of Haylen—salvaged books, the smell of fusion cells, hair poking out from under a hat, the sound of something heavy falling to the floor, the word _please_ when the answer is already _no_. There are few regrets so bitter as that moment, for her or for the other her.

And even avoiding Cambridge, or perhaps _because_ they avoid it, she can’t stop herself wondering.

What is Danse doing right now? With the Brotherhood gone, there’s no reason for him to leave the Commonwealth. With her gone, there’s no reason for him to stay. He asked her once not to die, for his sake if nothing else. She wonders if he still feels that way or if it would be easier for him if she just vanished, fell into the Wasteland and never came back. She wonders if he thinks of her, if there are moments when he remembers jumping out of vertibirds with her, exhilarated, laughing, free-falling, and if he smiles before he remembers the betrayal that came later.

She wonders if he takes any solace in the knowledge that their enemies, their _creators,_ are just as dead as their comrades. She wonders if he’s visited the crater left in her wake, if he’s tallied one body count against the other, if there’s an ounce of love left in him for her, or satisfaction, if nothing else.

She wonders if Deacon thinks of everything that happened and feels any of the things she feels.

It is creeping up on her, Cambridge. She can’t dodge it forever, but she does today.

~

Cambridge isn’t the only thing they avoid. Once they’re far enough from the ruins to pretend to forget until they almost really can, they actually talk. It’s not as hard or as awkward as she’d feared it would be. They avoid the questions she doesn’t want him to ask and the answers he doesn’t want to get in return and for a few hours, things are fun again.

“Ok, ok, ok. What did the ghoul say to the other ghoul who cheats at poker?”

She rolls her eyes, but she grins, adjusts the strap of her bag. “I don’t know, what?”

“You’re not playing _fair-_ al.” He actually laughs—the real one. “You get it? Because feral? _Fair_ -al?”

She smiles and shakes her head. “Wow,” she says as flatly as she can, as though she isn’t pleased.

“Ok, I got another one: what did the rockstar name his radscorpion?”

“Mmm, I don’t know, Dinner?”

He snorts and gives her a little shove. “Nice try but no. Sting!” And then he laughs like this is his best joke yet.

“I—uh, I don’t get it.”

“You know, _Sting._ The guy, Sting?”

She takes her eyes off the road in front of them just long enough to give him a blank look. “I don’t know who that is.”

His mouth pops open and he gapes at her for a second before shaking his head and _tutting_ at her. “Next time we go to the Rail, I’m getting you educated about old world music. Ok, ok. I got one more.” He bumps her shoulder with his, but he doesn’t move back into place this time. Instead he slips his hand into hers and twines their fingers together. She lets him. “You ready?”

“Yeah.”

He squeezes her hand and even here, on this desolate road, she feels somewhat at home. Maybe it’s not about _place_ , after all.

“What did the angry customer say to Lukowski?”

“But Lukowski’s dead, Deacon—”

“Shh, I know, that’s not the point.”

“Fine, what did the customer say?”

“Told him to can it!”

It takes her a second, which is apparently a second too long because Deacon sighs dramatically and uses his grip on her hand to yank her closer. She almost trips over a snag in the broken asphalt. “You’ve been gone too long,” he says, too gently, like the realization might break them, like it hasn’t already. And then, with a little more cheer, “Clearly my influence has been missed.”

It’s close, that—bordering on a truth. But she fakes a grin and the moment passes them by. They keep hold of each other.

“Ok, _one_ more,” he says.

~

Bunker Hill rises and sets with the sun. The town—if it can be called that—is bunking down for the night: stalls packing up, lamps going out, barstools and glasses filling quickly. They are aware of Tens and Deacon passing through, but no one offers a greeting.

Stockton is the only person in Bunker Hill who doesn’t completely distrust them, and that’s only because saving his daughter’s life apparently outweighs completely demolishing his homestead. Or maybe he feels as responsible for that as she does; he’s the one who brought the Railroad to the Hill, after all.

Even still, her reputation as the Wanderer has him tense. “No news on my end,” he says, frown lines deepening with every word. “HQ have a problem?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head, wishing that the only semi-friendly face around wasn’t a Railroad contact. He doesn’t even know her real name—not that she technically has one, but still. This is why she’s leaving: she’s so tired of being Wanderer, of everything that means. In her unnatural life, she has been so many people and to have chosen to be the Wanderer, out of all of them, hurts her in a way that she knows she can never get away from no matter how far she runs. What the Wanderer did will never go away. “This isn’t business,” she continues, and Stockton visibly relaxes.

He doesn’t quite smile at her. “What can I do for you then?”

Deacon smiles, all teeth and dazzle. Fake. Most anybody would believe it. “We’re lookin’ for the ghoul whale,” he says, announcing it like it’s an adventure and not potentially terrifying.

Sea Creatures. _Ugh._

 _Giant_ Sea Creatures. Even worse.

“Oh!” Stockton chuckles. “That old tale! Ole Peg, they call her. Bunch of caravan hand campfire stories.”

They banter that way for a few minutes and Tens almost finds herself sucked in by Deacon’s stupid grin. It’s the fake one, the one he uses to get people to talk; she wonders if he knows he doesn’t need it for this, if he even knows he’s using it. But maybe it’s less the grin and more the fact that he’s genuinely excited about this.

He’s excited about a giant—and likely evil—radiated fish monster.

“Well,” Stockton finally says, rubbing his chin as though it takes a lot of thought. “I suppose if you’re gonna try, you’ll want to start at the harbour. Not many other places for a whale to hide.”

“Thanks, Stockton,” she says. He nods his head at her, once, politely, and they head toward the gate. If there’s a free bunk anywhere around, it’s not likely they’d rent it to her. She doesn’t think she could sleep here anyway.

~

They find an empty apartment building next to the harbour. Deacon pauses a moment to stare at the missing wall; he laughs and tells her that hotels used to charge more if the rooms had views of the water.

Sometimes it really hits her how much more he seems to know about the world she came from than she does. Even if it was never _her_ world because it wasn’t _her,_ not yet, it’s still so strange to think she never really experienced it. All she remembers is fighting, same as now just with better lighting, different people, dumber reasons.

She joins him, scrambles onto the floor and swings her legs over the edge.

Deacon grimaces; he’s never been fond of heights and she always has. He stands close behind her, close enough to touch, but he can’t bring himself to go all the way to the edge. It’s almost funny, the things he’s afraid of and the thing’s she’s afraid of: long drops and sea monsters. She smirks and decides to just call it a night, gets up and starts unpacking sleeping bags. She works quickly, quietly, not really in the mood for food or more small talk.

Just like last night, the dark conceals much, but not all.

They are side by side on separate cots, close enough to touch and staring up into the dark. Deacon reaches for her hand, tangles their fingers together in a way that doesn’t hold, but _wants_.

The questions come, as hard to choke out as the answers.

_Where?_

_Far Harbor._ Things are quiet there. She’s quiet there. He chuckles. _Sea Monsters._ She does too.

_When?_

_Soon._ Sanctuary, Shaun, silently slip away. No more goodbyes, no more hearing _please_ when the answer is already _no_.

_Why?_

There are too many answers and too few all at once. She is silent.

This is how they began, side by side in the dark, hands reaching out toward each other. She wonders if this is how they will end as well, if he will let her go like he always does, if this is the moment they will unravel.

“Don’t go,” he says. And she breaks. He’s not letting her go, but this time she’s got to go anyway.

~

The next morning (and long into the afternoon), they scour the harbour from Bunker Hill all the way down to the Harbormaster Hotel, Deacon bouncing like a kid the whole way.

“How are we supposed to find something that’s underwater?” she asks, when they stop for a break outside the Taphouse. She thinks, briefly, of trying to convince him to give up on the scary sea monster search and just duck inside for too many drinks. It’s a bad idea, but she’s willing to do almost anything to avoid dealing with some giant ghoul fish.

He taps the side of his head with his finger and grins at her, his sunglasses shining blacker than black in the light. “That’s the trick,” he says, as though it’s an actual answer.

She huffs. It’s hot out, the water smells terrible, there’s a whale down there somewhere, probably swimming around and waiting to eat her.

Do whales eat people? She could ask Deacon... She shouldn’t ask Deacon.

“Do... What do whales eat?” She clears her throat in an attempt to disguise her worry, trying to put to use all those skills he tried to teach her.

“People,” he says immediately, and she chokes on her breath. He laughs while she coughs it out, controlling himself just enough to continue: “But only the pretty ones. That’s why I brought you: bait.”

“You’re a jackass,” she says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand so he can’t see her laughing too.

When she looks up across the water, she can see the empty space where the Prydwen used to be. Her grin falters for just a second. They’re almost... Things can’t be what they were before, but they can be ok again. She’ll have to look at what she’s done, but not today, not right now. So she forces her smile back into place and turns her head back toward him.

And sees Shaun standing on the dock.

~

He’s not Shaun.

That should have been obvious from the moment she saw the kid, but damn her, maybe she...

His name’s Donny and apparently he lives in a shed on the dock. There are worse fates for orphaned children, Tens knows that, but still. It grates on her in a way she wouldn’t have expected.

“What’re you doin’ out here, kid?” Deacon cares—she knows he does—but like her, he doesn’t know how to be the sort of person who cares about some orphan out in the Wastes, so he puts on a different face. This Deacon puts a hand on the boy’s head and grins; _trust me,_ this Deacon says. _I’ll help you out, kid._

Donny points out toward the water and again, Tens can see the empty air in the distance and she knows there is a mass grave below it—a metal skeleton, the size of a whale probably.

“There’s a sea monster out there,” Donny says, voice full of awe. “Sometimes it pokes its eye up out of the water!”

Suddenly she feels the need to wipe spider webs off her skin. The thought of it being so close—of it even actually being here at all—it makes her heart pound like nothing she’s ever faced before. She looks over Donny’s head at Deacon and silently vows to push him into the harbour.

“Look!” Donny yells. “See!”

And her heart stops cold in her chest because she _does_ see it. _Fuck. Fuck!_ A long, slender stalk rising out of the water and twisting around toward her, dirty water dripping from debris and seaweed. It’s—it’s...

“It’s a submarine,” she realizes. She lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding and her whole body relaxes. “Oh thank f—” _Fuck,_ she thinks again, looking over at Deacon’s growing grin.

He refuses to be deterred from the horror that is the harbour, so they still end up stripping down and swimming out to the damn submarine. By the time they reach it, she’s somewhere between completely disgusted and pleasantly surprised that she lived through it.

“It wasn’t that far,” Deacon says, extending his hand to pull her up out of the water.

“Far enough.” She wipes some of the water from herself, not that it accomplishes much, and she opens the hatch.

“Well,” Deacon says, when he hops down next to her and they come face to face with a ghoul in a uniform. “It’s not a whale, but this works too.”

~

Captain Zao, he calls himself. They’re meeting all sorts of people today.

“And you’ve just been here this whole time? You haven’t tried to leave?” She’s not sure why she’s so angry, but she is. She is so, _so_ angry at this man and his inaction. “Two hundred _years_ and you haven’t even tried to fix your goddamn boat?”

“Subma—”

She gives Deacon a glare that could scare off a dead man and he shuts up. It’s not his fault; it’s not him. It’s this _man!_ This man who has spent _two hundred years_ in the same place!

“I tried to leave, but I was afraid raiders would take her, my Yangtze. I could not lose her; she is all I have left, my only way back home. You must understand.”

She does. That’s the problem.

“If you would help me,” Zao begins. “If you could—”

“You have to get out of here.” She says it more to herself than to him, looking down at her feet without seeing anything. “You can’t—you can’t stay in the same place forever.”

Zao is silent for a moment, then he sighs and stands up, turns away from them. “I helped do this. I did as I was ordered on the day the bombs destroyed this place. I did not hesitate. But my crew, my friends, they are down below and they are jiang shi—they are like me but... gone. I cannot—I do not know which is more cruel: to kill them or to let them go on as they are.”

Faces drift through her mind—the people she loved, the _only_ people she loved from the world before. She didn’t know them—not _her_ , but the her that came before. Tens loved them and two hundred years later, she found them, wasting away in a robobrain warehouse, free floating in vats and brain juice, waiting to be _used,_ waiting to be _altered._ They would’ve been like her—something remade, something owned, something and no longer someone.

She killed Haylen. She killed Rhys and Ingram and the rest of the Brotherhood. She killed Father. She killed Enrico and his daughters and B5-92 and every single person in the Institute who didn’t make it the relay before she made it to the detonator. She killed Liam, and she killed Glory, and she killed Shaun’s mother; even if she didn’t pull the trigger, she killed them.

But nothing has ever been as hard as tearing down those vats, one by one with fists and metal bars and bricks. Smashing them into the concrete floor, shattering glass against the walls, soft tissue decorating the room like something Pickman would’ve done.

She killed the people she loved because she could not leave them to the fates they were given.

That was the moment pieces of her started dying. That was the moment she stopped being able to come back. That was the moment that led to every other death that hurts.

“I’ll do it,” she says. “I won’t help you fix this damn boat, but I’ll... I’ll kill them.”

 _Save them,_ she wants to say. _Stop them. Help them. Fix them._

Maybe those things are true, but _kill them_ is the only part that really means anything.

“Xie xie. Xie xie.”

She doesn’t want his thanks, but she knows he has to give it. She thanked X6; after it was done, after every vat in that room had been destroyed, she crumpled to the floor and she cried and she thanked him.

~

It’s dark by the time they’re finished. Deacon doesn’t say anything when they leave the sub, and he doesn’t make jokes when they strip down to swim back, and he doesn’t tease her when he helps her up onto the dock.

It’s empty. The door of Donny’s little shack is shut and through the window, she can see him lying on a ratty cot, fast asleep. As though he’s safe.

“I’m kinda surprised,” Deacon finally says. “I guess I thought if we ever ran into a Chinese Navy veteran, you’d respond a little differently.”

“You get your info from PAM?”

“Yeah,” he says, letting out a quiet chuckle of relief. She’s ok. Or maybe not ok, but ok enough. “I just thought you might feel... resentful. I think I would.”

She shrugs as she works a lockpick in Donny’s door. There’s no resistance and she realizes it’s not locked. The lock probably doesn’t even work. “I—or well, _she_ , I guess... _We._ We killed just as many people, Deacon. Me and Tens, Tens and me. Hard sometimes to know who’s who, but I remember. We knew what was coming.”

She knows he already knows all that. Funny how many secrets she has that aren’t really secrets anymore. They’re floating around the Commonwealth—the deaths, the past lives, the regrets, the fears. Some went with Danse. Some died with Father. Some are tucked safely into Nick’s heart. Some are hiding inside Deacon beside secrets of his own. She pushes open Donny’s door and walks up to his bed.

“Don’t tell him it was a submarine,” Deacon says. “You’ll suck all the fun out of it for him.”

She thinks again of how one day, she will have to sit Shaun down and tell him so many hard truths. How, one day, there will be nothing left but to face all the things she’s been avoiding.

“I’m sorry we didn’t find the whale,” she says, right before she shakes Donny awake. And she genuinely is, as much as she hopes there is no such horror lurking in the depths.

Donny looks up at her, horrified for a moment before he recognizes them. “Did you find it? Did you find the monster?”

“It swallowed us _whole,_ ” she says, taking his hand. He comes willingly, sleepy and young as he is. “We had to cut our way out! It was full of goo!”

“Really?”

“Really,” Deacon chimes in.

Tens gets down onto her knees and looks Donny in the eyes. “Do you want to come with me? I have—I have a son your age. And we’re going to live somewhere that has _lots_ of sea monsters.”

Donny nods his head. “Ok.”

Maybe he doesn’t need her. Maybe Shaun doesn’t need her. But maybe they do. And maybe trying her best can be enough this time, with no Elder and no Railroad and no Father to tell the sorts of lies they tell.

~

She lets the boy go back to bed, decides they can bunk down here and head back in the morning. This is the longest she’s been away from Shaun since she brought him to the surface and she can’t say that what she feels is _motherly,_ but it’s... something.

Deacon spreads out their sleeping bags and shoves a pile of crates in front of the door. If the kid’s lived here this long without something coming in and killing him, she figures it’s safe enough, but still, the extra precautions are as comforting as they can be.

His fingers find hers, thumping anxiously against the floorboards. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. And it would be so much easier to stay. Sanctuary, Sturges. Diamond City, Nick. Anywhere, anyone. There are so many places in the Commonwealth that she can be, but she knows there are no places here that she can heal.

 _Don’t go._ It’d be so much easier not to, to stay in the same place, to let the fear hold her here for two hundred years more.

Deacon shifts beside her, turns to lie on his side and she mirrors him. He just looks at her for a few minutes, takes in whatever her face gives away. “I hear there are ghoul whales in Far Harbor,” he finally says, and she snorts so loud she has to cover her mouth with her free hand.

 _You should visit,_ she could say. But she won’t, because Deacon is too much like her: he doesn’t know who he is anymore. _Don’t go,_ he’d said. _Please don’t go._

She always leaves. He’s not ready to come with her, not yet. That’s why he always lets her go.

“I’ll miss you,” she whispers.

“I’ll catch up,” he promises.


End file.
